A comment on a radio program this morning kind of triggered a thought.

Today, there are two know people retained by their opposite governments. Both are known names. Media coverage has been extensive. The comment triggering this item was “there are people involved”. Because of these identifiable persons (a conscious change) we should care. Yes we should, but why should we care about a situation because we can identify the people?

Why do some people matter more than others without any discernable difference other than one is easier to write/comment about?

These two are individuals influential in their field, commerce. It is easy to search their lives, connections, family, foibles etc. There is much discussion of why they have been retained and the machinations performed to justify particular situations.

Somehow we have been manipulated into believing that identifiable persons are worth more time and effort than people not easily identified but are in at least as much and probably more peril.

We send purposefully arm, train and send young fit able young people to far away places to further our particular aims and often just forget them. They are not in as grave a situation as many of the young men we sent on “expeditions” in the mid 20th century, but their situations are serious. Around the world, families receive notice that their son or daughter has been killed in the service of their country with very little media coverage. They too are important.

There are people living in areas where population pressures, lack of work, lack of law, lack of food has made them desperate and often seriously oppressed. There are people living in locales where humans were not meant to live; low land, unstable land, unproductive land. These people are relevant, but because it is not easy to put a face and a story to them, they don’t become the people in “there are people involved”.

It isn’t easy to expand the mind to encompass these people who are in suffering en masse but in order to actually address major problems. We must.

The Plaidneck
(with apologies for the huge gap in putting my thoughts together for you)